Driving Through Russia Without A Visa: The Saatse Boot 

This video has a correction: Further research revealed that the camera tower Matt spots is, almost certainly, just a regular cell tower. Or, at least, that's what they want us to think. For all corrections on this channel, see www.tomscott.com/corrections/

Yes, I know this is technically a clickbait title. But it's a clickbait title that delivers, damn it.

I can drive through Russia without a visa. I wish I could get out though.

I lived in Värska and our summerhouse is behind Saatse, so I can answer your questions. You can pass that area with a bike. Still, you should not put your leg on that ground- you can get a ticket. If you are passing that area on very low speed (like, under 10km/h), border guard might stop you and take you to their headquarters for questioning. There are many smoke smugglers and another criminals so they might think you are one of them. If your car should break down, stay in the car and call the police and ask for local border guard to come to you. They will help and you won't get a ticket or put in jail. If the Russian border guard should see you, you better know russian so you can explain what happened. If you are going to pass that area on foot- just don't. If anyone sees you, even some random local people, they will call boarder guard and they will be there in less than 5 minutes. Long story short - you can pass that area with any vehicle, but you can not put your foot on ground. If you do, beg that no one sees you. And.. there are no cameras on that mast. Cameras and sensors are hidden near borders, like on trees.

Another anticlimax: you can get a cruise to Saint Petersburg, spend day in Russia and leave in the evening with the cruise ship, all without a visa. To be precise, you can spend total of 72h there if you reserve a room from hotel beforehand.

I'm from Estonia and I can confirm one thing: you are allowed to ride a bike through Saatse boot. I haven't done it myself but a friend of mine has.

Dammit, now I cant stop imagining someone driving through that forest playing YMCA at full blast with the windows open...

Obligatory: "Papers, please."

I like to think the tower was just a huge pole with a platform at the top, and on the platform was a guy with an RPG, just PRAYING that you'd stop.

0:07 "If you're a British tourist, Russia isn't easy to get in to. You have to book your travel, then request a formal invitation from the hotel you're staying at, and then apply for a visa weeks or months in advance." If you're from MOST countries in the world, this is true for almost anywhere you go.

GOOD THING YOU DID IT 6 YEARS AGO

One feature RU-vid definitely needs is "You're subscribed to this channel from ", because I have no idea how this got into my subscriptions. Have a like.

why wouldn't you do something stupid to get arrested it'll get you maximum value for your travel: one week estonia 20 years siberia value!

Anticlimax? What, were you expecting to have to slow for wild T-90s crossing the road or something?

Hello from Russia :) We are not as scary as you might think. However the "boot" is often used for contraband, thus the no-stop regulations. If you stop there for technical reasons, your car is most likely to be searched for contraband and other illegal stuff, and then estonean border guards get called to fuel or transport the vehicle with russian ones' permission. Please don't go out to take a selfie with the "no walking" signs - in past years russian border guards were known to freak out and arrest people "just in case", getting you all the way into Russia and having you spend quite some time while they check your identity, you pay fine and actually get out of there. Nowadays they've gotten used to tourists and most likely will just escort you out. As for what you do in your car while on russian land - nobody cares, well, unless you make a scandal out of it. So don't worry.

There's actually another similar situation in which EU citizens can pass through Russia. The Saimaa Canal (built when Finland was still part of the Russian Empire) joins the Baltic Sea to the Finnish lake system through Russian territory and, as long as you have a passport and don't leave your boat, you can sail through Russian without the need to go through the visa process.

I can just imagine the Russians asking why you’re there. “Oh the three of us just decided to to get in the car and film this little stretch of road. It’s for youtube.” “Who would watch such mundane things? You British spies think you can fool me?!”

You are presenting this `Going through Russia` as some very very very scary thing. I couldnt even imagine what would have happened if i just used a boat to come to GB without a visa.

Actually you can go to Russia from Estonia visa free for up to 3 days. If you take a ferry from Tallinn to Petersburgh, given that you have a valid passport, you can stay in Russia for up to 72 hours. The same goes for ferries from Helsinki. So if you'd want to make a quick trip to Russia without going through all the VISA application process, you can fly to either Finland or Estonia and take the ferry from there.

I cycled through there one week ago, still possible and a cool place! Felt a bit sketchy though but was no problem

Hi Tom, since I'm early I want to take this opportunity to say that I find your videos very interesting, absolutely love them. Your voice only helps.

One way of getting into Russia without a visa is jumping on a passenger ferry travelling from Tallinn, Helsinki or Stockholm to St. Petersburg. The passengers (and crew) on the ship are regarded as an organised excursion group, so a 72-hour visa free stay is allowed. And there is still a big pile of forms to fill before entering the country, though.

Actually their are multiple ways to get into Russia without a visa thoug!. You can enter all major Russian port cities (Archangelesk, Kalingrad,Sevastropol, Sint-Petersburg, Vladivostok) without a visa if you are on a cruise (for a visit up to 72 hours, while residing on the boot I believe). Their is a canal called the Saimaa Canal that was build in Finland during the final decades of Russian Rule. After Finland declared independence their were two wars between Finland and Russia, resulting in Finland having to cede the province of Karelia and with that loosing sovereignty over part of the canal. But Russia and Finland later made a deal that allowed the Fins to use the Russian 20 km stretch of the canal visa-free !

It's not THAT difficult to get a Russian visa. All you do is call a visa agency pay a fee (the agency takes 25% on top) post them your passport via special delivery and it comes back 15 days later with a Russian visa in it. They do the invitation stuff for you. You can get one 3 months in advance. I've had a unlimited entry business visa in my UK passport for the past 7 years. The only restriction is you need to have some sort of visa before hand that isn't unlimited. Plus they have transit visas at Moscow airport if you have a flight ticket out you can roam for a day or two before catching your connecting flight. Even the visa registration isn't enforced much. I travelled all the way across Russia registering my visa in Rostov (late by 8 days) and not registering it again until I got to Vladivostok.

Haha. I love how you get to a "thump!" on a bad part of the road just as you say "Russia!". Perfectly summed :D

Tom: "you can't just arrive on the plane and ask to let you in" Me: *laughs in Serbian*

I can drive through any bit of Russia I want! Without a visa! Because I'm Russian citizen

the german subs are a bit wrong, i think the translator has some trouble with punctuation and the difference between Visa (credit card) and visa (the paper you need to enter a different country)...

57.8 degrees North. I live in Northern Scotland at the same latitude and it's crazy how much more Artic it is in Estonia.

as an Estonian, with only 1.3m people, it is always nice to be mentioned in a channel like this :)

That's how hard is to get UK visa for me, so I don't even bother.

When seeing "Through Russia", I had expected it to be in the direction of China, not back into Estonia. But then again, I should expect this from you by now.

As someone who lives in a country without land borders (Australia), I have always been fascinated by unusual borders between countries, and how people are allowed to travel across those borders.

There is a busline in Helsinki that starts in Helsinki goes trough Vantaa (the neighbouring town) and comes back to Helsinki. It used to be that there was different tickets for Helsinki and one that allowed you to travel both in Helsinki and in the neighbouring towns. So if you had your inside Helsinki ticket and went on that bus where the line started you could not get out till the final stop. I used to use that line often and every time it felt like going through some occupied area you can't get into.

I crossed the boarder to russia by accident...coming from Finland and guess what? The boarder police was so nice they even invited us on a drink in their office....no joke!!! We even took a group photo including the watchdogs!! We get very badly influenced by our governments about how crazy and dangerous Russia can be but the reality is mostly very different...Russians are nice people !!!

we can't stop here, this is mordor

Tom what's your job?

Drive one mile an hour while blasting The Village People and then run out of gas when you're about 10 feet away from Estonia.

As some Estonians have noted in the comments, there are actually TWO locations on the road with these restrictions, the Boot, and a 20m section of the road about 1.5 kms north of the Boot. Also, the road is now apparently paved and marked with road markings.

"I'd get my zoom lens out but I'm not doing that on the Russian border" nice

That's actually really interesting. But why? I've always been really oddly fascinated with these arbitrary lines we draw that surround and separate countries. It's weird, because nothing's actually any different when you go from Estonia to Russia, but there's a weird giddy feeling when you cross borders.

There's a tiny part of Russia on that same road pretty soon after the Saatse Boot (driving north). It's only maybe 15 meters long but same rules apply to it. You can drive a bicycle but can't stop (too bad if you fall or your bike breaks down).

It's things like this that make road tripping so fun

Tavaline päev, vaatan subscription listi. Tom Scott uus video, jess. EESTIS :D ? Väike üllatus selle kohapealt.

"We are not bloody finding out" just made me giggle.

I"ve always wondered those questions what you brought up! Breaking a law from the other side of the border

Lucky for me as a Hong Kong passport holder, we can stay in Russian for 14 days without a visa.

very interesting, thank you!

i am from georgia and if you are a georgian citizen you are a citizen of all of eu and all of ex sovie tcountries its awesome

We have the same visa problem visiting England. The most problems come from US Visa with month of waiting and personal interview.

You really make videos of things I don't know!

nice road trip Tom

Have you produced a video of the Airport which serves 3 nations? I just arrived at it this week and I have so many questions about it works. I would like to be lazy and watch you explain how it all.

when you were stoped there, the border patroll sayed "tervist" (it kinda sounds like tourist) wich means hello in estonian, and you guys thought he sayed "tourist?"

This video would be so badass if it was posted this year.

You can stay 3 days in St Petersburg without a visa if you go by ferry

Tom, You seem to be shocked that Russia doesn't allow people to come in whenever they want to, but only Europe doesn't see this problem. America and the rest of the world also needs a visa that can take months, even years to take. And the boarders are even worse then Russia. The Mexican boarder is miles of barb wire fence with active police patrol. And the Canadian boarder is a line of cut down trees all alongside the Canadian boarder. And im not saying its wrong, im just mentioning the fact that you are picking Russia as if its the only one doing this. So I am assuming you have never been to america. And for those who will say "America does this because it has a immigration problem!" Russia has the second most amount of immigrants in the world...

Blasting The village from the car speakers with open windows while going through Russian border is something I would totally do.

I think you can also cycle across the border. At least between the border of Finland and Russia.

It is also technically possible to drive through territory Syria claims as its own, without needing a tourist visa: the Golan Heights, which can, for most people, only be accessed from Israel proper.

I would have wanted to meet you when you were in Estonia.

Your a lot braver than I would have been. I would have gotten the VISA and tried to get one of the closest hotels invitation I could just in case I did get stopped.

You guys should try to find some people to play citation needed with, you could make a series "Citation Needed Abroad"

1:39 legal...legal...legal... ILLEGAL. ILLEGAL

That is not the type of road conditions I want to experience if the punishment for a break down or accident is a week in a cold cell.

Yeah, when I saw this I was like: "That's one of those no stop things right?" Several countries have this, and it makes no sense.

Awesome. I think I'd be rather nervous about the car breaking down :p

Knowing russians the guard probably wasn't even there

I just saw an advertisement for tom Scott on Tom Scott's channel

for me, going to Estonia is as hard as going to Russia is for you, and going to Russia for me is as easy as going to Estonia is for you. I'm from Belarus :)

Came to this video because of the thumbnail. It looks like you've got Jim from the American version of The Office riding with you.

No wonder the country is so big with such a small amount of people. They won't let anyone in.

This video is mad close to 1 mill

Huh, I had no idea there was a place like that boot shaped area.

If anyone’s wondering if (i) the events of 2022 have changed or closed this route (ii) what happens if you drive through in a UK-plated vehicle and (iii) what happens if you stop straight afterwards for selfies with your dog in front of the scary sign. The answer to all three is absolutely naff all.

To clarify, you don't need to book your travel before applying for a Russian visa. In fact it's recommended that you don't.

I really didn't find it that hard to get into Russia... just think how hard it is for them to visit the UK.

GLORY GREATEST

"we just drove thru a bit of russia without a visa" ... then got stopped by Estonian military

The thumbnail makes me think of a mum and dad with a bewildered child in the back seat

Welcome to Estonia! What were you most and least impressed by?

My ultimate goal in life is now to drive through the Saatse Boot blasting You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) and the Village People out of my car at full volume.

Wait... YOU WERE TO ESTONIA.. for a second!? Why didn't I know!! ;(

Nice! You were in the baltics

What if you're ghost riding the whip???????

Was there yesterday and was told you'll hardly be arrested these days for e.g. walking through the boot, just given an angry lecture and handed over to Estonian police. Years ago it was far more tense, but they've got used to tourists by now. The Boot is popular with smugglers though, so that's another can of worms.

When I clicked the vid I thought there was 2 toms

Wow Tom you founded a Bug cool

nobody commenting that visa is a plural word, the singular of which is visum?

What if vehicles break down ?

Mad lads

That was actually pretty cool :D

Very nace video!

Haha, it's like the Berlin underground in the communist era that ran under West Berlin - just never stopped at the West-Berlin stops (that used to be in use before WWII) - on which the people of East Berlin could legally cross the East German / West German border without any kind of document or visa - and, also, any chance to exit the metro car of course :)

Do we get to see that bit where you got pulled over?

things that you wouldn't dare do in 2022:

What if there is a traffic jam and you have to stop?

Its so bizzare seeing how big of a deal simple drive through Russia can be for foreigners as a russian xD

what if you did doughnuts in the middle of the road because technically you wouldn't be stopping

what happens if your car breaks down? because you have to stop then...